1 HN user recommended this talk1 month2020–2022score 1
Years with an HN recommendation, 2007–2026
HN cites it for first-hand ARM history, including Thumb's origin, and for Jaggar's endorsement of RISC-V.
Dave Jaggar, who defined much of the ARM architecture, recounts how Acorn's near-extinction led to ARM, including the history of Thumb, StrongARM, and the Austin team.
“Dave Jaggar has some interesting comments on the history around DEC, StrongARM and the Austin ARM team.” (HN, 2020)
Agreed plus Thumb which got ARM into Nokia mobile phones. Dave Jaggar has some interesting comments on the history around DEC, StrongARM and the Austin ARM team. [this video]
Jaggar discusses ARM history around DEC, StrongARM, and Austin team.
Surprising but true! Dave Jaggar makes it clear in this video that it was to keep code within smaller Nintendo ROM size constraints. Seven year gap between ARM / Nintendo discussions and GBA appearance! [this video]
Jaggar explains Thumb's origin in Nintendo ROM size constraints.
That's one opinion. Another ARM engineer who contributed one heck of a lot more to ARM's success (designed ARM7TDMI, Thumb, Thumb2) says RISC-V is great. See at 51 minutes in this [this video]
Who says RISC-V is mediocre? Here's the opinion of probably THE most important ARM engineer of the 1990s and 2000s, Dave Jaggar who developed the ARM7TDMI, Thumb, Thumb2. [this video] Check at 51:30 where he says "Are there any ARM snipers? No .. I would Google RISC-V and find out all about it. They've done a fine instruction set, a fine job [...] it's the state of the art now for 32-bit general purpose instruction sets. And it's got the 16-bit compressed stuff. So, yeah, learning about that, you're learning from the best."
That's the opinion of one ARM engineer I've never heard of. Here's the opinion of probably THE most important ARM engineer of the 1990s and 2000s, Dave Jaggar who developed the ARM7TDMI, Thumb, Thumb2. [this video] Check at 51:30 where he says "Are there any ARM snipers? No ... I would Google RISC-V and find out all about it. They've done a fine instruction set, a fine job [...] it's the state of the art now for 32-bit general purpose instruction sets. And it's got the 16-bit compressed stuff. So, yeah, learning about that, you're learning from the best."
There's really a lot of severely misinformed opinion there. "Much of the hype of RISC-V is hoping for laptop/desktop/server class silicon." Really? RISC-V is pitched mostly against the likes of ARM, which seems to be doing fine without laptop/desktop/server class silicon. Several RISC-V vendors are already shipping Cortex A53/A55 class CPUs, which are used as the LITTLE cores in mobile devices -- and even still the main cores in lower end mobile. Several RISC-V vendors have formally announced A72 (SiFive U84) or A73 (Alibaba C910) class cores. Alibaba is apparently using these internally already, and boards for general sale are expected this year. SiFive's U84 will probably be shipping in around 12 months from now. ARM is a few steps ahead with A75 and A76, but those are just incremental developments and RISC-V is catching up fast. It seems the article was written before the HiFive Unmatched was announced -- but I don't think it was written before the U74 CPU cores in the Unmatched were announced in October 2018, so I guess the author either wasn't paying attention, or else don't understand the standard 2 to 2.5 years from announcement of a core to shipping products using an SoC with that core. There is nothing surprising about the HiFive Unmatched. Was the article also written before Apple announced its switch to ARM64 architecture and their M1 chip? The M1 uses ARM's 64 bit instruction set, but is far ahead of anything from ARM or its other licencees in performance. If some
> RISC-V seems like it hasn’t learned anything from CPUs designed after 1991. Never mind what RISC-V says about itself. Here is Dave Jaggar, a key ARM architect, endorsing RISC-V as state of the art in 2019: [this video] .
Key ARM architect endorsing RISC-V as state of the art.
There's really a lot of severely misinformed opinion there. "Much of the hype of RISC-V is hoping for laptop/desktop/server class silicon." Really? RISC-V is pitched mostly against the likes of ARM, which seems to be doing fine without laptop/desktop/server class silicon. Several RISC-V vendors are already shipping Cortex A53/A55 class CPUs, which are used as the LITTLE cores in mobile devices -- and even still the main cores in lower end mobile. Several RISC-V vendors have formally announced A72 (SiFive U84) or A73 (Alibaba C910) class cores. Alibaba is apparently using these internally already, and boards for general sale are expected this year. SiFive's U84 will probably be shipping in around 12 months from now. ARM is a few steps ahead with A75 and A76, but those are just incremental developments and RISC-V is catching up fast. It seems the article was written before the HiFive Unmatched was announced -- but I don't think it was written before the U74 CPU cores in the Unmatched were announced in October 2018, so I guess the author either wasn't paying attention, or else don't understand the standard 2 to 2.5 years from announcement of a core to shipping products using an SoC with that core. There is nothing surprising about the HiFive Unmatched. Was the article also written before Apple announced its switch to ARM64 architecture and their M1 chip? The M1 uses ARM's 64 bit instruction set, but is far ahead of anything from ARM or its other licencees in performance. If some
Here’s the opinion of probably THE most important ARM engineer of the 1990s and 2000s, Dave Jaggar who developed the ARM7TDMI, Thumb, Thumb2. [this video] Check at 51:30 where he says (bringing up the topic of RISC-V himself) “I would Google RISC-V and find out all about it. They’ve done a fine instruction set, a fine job […] it’s the state of the art now for 32-bit general purpose instruction sets. And it’s got the 16-bit compressed stuff. So, yeah, learning about that, you’re learning from the best.”
Apple's investment in ARM in November 1990 (when ARM was spun out of Acorn as a joint venture between Acorn, Apple, and VLSI) was a result of Apple's decision to select ARM for the Newton sometime in 1990 since Acorn and Apple competed in the UK education market [1]. [1] [this video] , "A History of The ARM Microprocessor"
Video list and Hacker News comment labels from HackerTube (prompted by @karpathy), released under ODC-By 1.0, built on the open-index/hacker-news archive. Hacker News data is provided by Y Combinator; comments remain the work of their authors. Video titles, channel names and thumbnails belong to their creators and are shown via YouTube. HackerTube Watch is an unofficial edition. Data export of 2026-10-31.
Plays via YouTube's privacy-enhanced embed
10 Hacker News comments
From the HN archive; up to 20 kept per video, favoring different commenters. Recommendations first.
Citations, criticism and jokes
Read more
Read more